Ng’ojoy was from Kenya, a place known for running, but he didn’t start until his sophomore year in high school. He didn’t like the spotlight running shone on him. But he was in a boarding school, and his dormmates wanted him to compete in a race. He decided he would race for his dorm.

“I was kind of a skinny guy who looked like I could run,” Ng’ojoy said and laughed. “So I think that’s why they wanted me to run.”

He ran a 10K for his first race. He ran it in 31 minutes.

That time gets him in the prestigious A wave in the Bolder/Boulder. By eight minutes. It might win him the citizen’s race.

Shy or not, he was, like his brothers, a runner.

Now, at 22, he’s at Northridge High School, coaching the school’s cross country team and trying to show others how to love running as much as he does.

“You need to love it,” he said. “If they do, it’s like another game to them. It’s fun. If I do not run for a day or two, I feel terrible.”

But Ng’ojoy wasn’t a natural right away. He wasn’t good enough to compete on his school team, even with that amazing time, until his junior year.

Still, he was good enough to get a scholarship to the University of Texas El-Paso, where he got used to living away from home. He missed his family – he still does – and it was a hard transition at first. He was shy and kept to himself, away from the other runners.

He grew out of that, he said, by growing up.

“Four years ago, I was four years younger,” he said simply. “I just had to learn how to get over that.”

Ng’ojoy reminds himself of new beginnings as he attempts to coach a young team unsure of itself after the first coach had to leave for personal reasons.

“You think that you were a runner at first,” he said. “But you know, maybe you weren’t as fast as you remember. There were many other runners at a much higher class than me when I first started.”

Northridge is another new beginning for Ng’ojoy. Representatives from Greeley/Evans District 6 happened to be in Texas, at a job fair Ng’ojoy attended, and that connection brought him to Colorado. There wasn’t any question in his mind that he wanted to stay in the U.S.

“Why would I go through all that training and maybe not work in the field I studied for?” Ng’ojoy said.

Northridge hired him to be a math teacher, not a cross country coach, but he seemed like a natural candidate to replace this year’s coach. He runs 120 miles a week and is sponsored by Spira, a small running shoe company (if you can’t spot Ng’ojoy by his perfect, white teeth or his dark chocolate skin, look for the bright yellow running shoes that Spira gives him to wear).

Greeley Central and Greeley West are fielding girls teams that may just win state this year, but Ng’ojoy is building his young team by getting the runners to focus on the journey, not the results.

“Once they cross the finish line, it’s a time trial for them,” Ng’ojoy said. “It’s a building process. It will help them for their next race. When they ask me about Central’s or West’s runners, I tell them this is not their first year running. They are juniors and seniors.”

Most of all, Ng’ojoy tells his kids not to look back. He wants them moving forward. It’s the same kind of attitude that helped him shed his shyness, feel at home in an unknown land and run free.

Staff writer Dan England covers the outdoors, entertainment and general assignment stories for The Tribune. His column runs on Tuesday. If you have an idea for a column, call (970) 392-4418 or e-mail dengland@greeleytribune.com.